American journal of public health
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Addiction represents one of the greatest public health problems facing the United States. Advances in addiction research have focused on the neurobiology of this disease. ⋯ These advances have fostered interdisciplinary collaborations focusing on the intersection of environment and behavior in addiction research. Although issues of privacy protection for study participants remain, these advances could potentially improve our understanding of initiation of drug use and relapse and help develop innovative technology-based interventions to improve treatment and continuing care services.
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Health insurance exchanges are a key component of the Affordable Care Act. Each exchange faces the challenge of minimizing friction with existing policies, coordinating churn between programs, and maximizing take-up. ⋯ Policymakers must ensure that their exchange-whether state or federally run-succeeds. Whether this happens will greatly depend on the political dynamics in each state.
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We have considered the tobacco industry's challenges to legislative attempts to provide more health-related information on retail packaging. The first issue is taking and acquiring the industry's intellectual property in Australia. The second challenge involves the tensions between graphic images and the First Amendment in the United States. We have argued that the Obama administration should take advantage of the current window of opportunity to aggressively restrict the industry's control of its products.